So here we are, almost at the end of the month and most people are desperately trying to close those last few orders to meet what are probably very challenging targets.  Time to bring out the discount – that will work, surely?!  Well, not necessarily.  Here are my 4 reasons why offering a discount to close is not always a good thing:

1. It devalues your product. If what you are selling was worth, say, £5,000 two weeks ago, why is it only worth £4,500 now?  While a discount designed to get the customer to order before the end of the week might just incentivise them to do so, it is also likely to leave a lasting impression that the product was priced too high in the first place which won’t help your long-term relationship and future sales.

Which brings us on to . . .

2. You risk ‘training’ your customers to expect a discount. If a discount is usually offered towards the end of any given month, term or year then the customers will learn to expect it and wait for it to happen.  We all know how we feel about certain large out-of-town furniture and carpet stores that advertise their sales an awful lot; we wait for the sale until we buy as we know there’s probably going to be one just around the corner.

3. It’s obvious but, by discounting to close, you are lowering your revenue and margins. To hit your overall business plan, how many more sales will you now need to make?  Would it be better to take a longer-term view and aim for a smaller amount of committed long-term customers who are willing to pay the true price of your product than a larger volume of customers who bought it because it was a bargain?  It’s a question only you can answer for your business but it’s worth considering.

4. You’re no longer in control of your sale. Most companies will spend a significant amount on sales (account management and new business development) in some way, shape or form.  Those people that you hire are there to add value to your business and, by offering a discount to close, you’re moving all the control over whether or not that potential customer will order onto your client – the decision is now theirs and there is little your salespeople can do to influence.  Unfortunately what this means for the business is that you’re really not getting the best value for money from the salespeople.

Instead of offering a discount, consider how you could add value to the sale.  Is there something you could offer that not only has a financial value attached to it that your potential customer would appreciate but also helps them get the best from the product they’re buying which will increase loyalty and long-term revenue?

Don’t get me wrong, used sporadically discounts can work and sometimes it can help you launch a product with early adopters or build a preferential relationship.  However, give it some thought before you do as it may be that the long-term pain isn’t worth the short-term gain.

Now don’t get me wrong, webinars are useful.  They are a great way of being able to communicate with lots of people at once and they work around your customer’s needs; they allow them to dip in and out as they please and you can offer webinars during the evenings and weekends when they won’t necessarily be tied up with other commitments.  From a business point of view, it allows you to promote your product or service to multiple people at once from the comfort of your own office, drastically reducing your cost per sale.

But they do have a downside.  Almost everyone who uses them says they aren’t as good as face-to-face meetings as it’s difficult to make any real connection.  While there is the functionality to ask questions and chat, webinar attendees tend not to do this.  You effectively end up ‘broadcasting’ your sales pitch when, as anyone who regularly reads my blogs will know, I believe the key to selling is listening and understanding.  It may take more time and effort to meet your potential customers in person but it always ends up with a stronger relationship so it is worth investing in if you can.

So when is a webinar actually better than a face-to-face meeting?  When you want honesty!

Webinars are the perfect platform for showcasing a new product or service and asking for honest feedback.  Given the relative anonymity of a webinar (i.e. you don’t have to look the presenter in the eye) your customers will give you their honest opinion on what they’re being shown which makes it an excellent platform for market testing.

Try it out.  Create a webinar with the purpose of gaining feedback (and try to avoid making it a thinly-veiled sales pitch) and see what happens.  People love being asked their opinion and you might get an insight into your product or service which you’ve never had before.

If you’re lucky, you would have had the Christmas period off, and today will be your first day back. For the vast majority of us, it’s time to crack on with January and I for one am looking forward to the New Year despite the weather/new exercise regime/lack of daylight that goes with it.

I’ve read a lot of articles and blogs recently about January blues and how to overcome them, usually by easing yourself into it slowly. As someone who’s growing a business I’m not entirely sure that works for everyone so, having given it some thought, my three top tips to help you hit the ground running are:

1. Talk to people

You might be feeling a bit bloated and bleary-eyed after Christmas and New Year and may not be feeling that sociable. However, the sooner you start engaging with people (colleagues, customers and suppliers) the sooner you’ll start to get your mojo back and remember what your business is all about.

2. Do one good thing well on your first day back.

You could easily spend your first day or even the first few days back in the office shuffling emails around and doing admin. However, I find that you feel much better if you find a task that needs doing which will genuinely help your business develop and then do it well. You could pick up the phone to those potential customers you met at that event last year to see how they’re doing. You could write that blog about the product you’re due to release to give your customers something to look forward to.

Whatever it is, make sure it has a tangible business outcome as it’s bound to make you feel better.

3. Book your next break

It might not be realistic to have that dream holiday to the Maldives booked, but you should definitely have a look at your calendar and your workload and plan for your next break from work. Just knowing that you have a week off during the February half term will give you something to look forward to helping you get over the January blues.

And it’s only 6 and a bit weeks away anyway. Blimey — better get cracking!

Here’s to a successful 2023 🙂

Just before Bett this year, Nick caught up with Lawrence Royston, Founder of teamSOS, to talk all things edtech.

Lawrence is one of the true entrepreneurs of the Edtech market. Along with his partner Joanne, he started with GroupCall messenger, the first SMS messaging system for schools in the UK, then built Xporter, supporting Third parties to have a generic way to integrate with MIS data, before looking at how they could provide deeper insights in the data they were already transferring through GroupCall XVault. He’s also supported GDPRis and has recently started a new business in teamSOS, an incident management and compliance tool for staff in Education and NHS establishments.

We’ve split the interview into two parts to make it easier to digest. In part one Nick and Lawrence discuss:

• What it means to have an entrepreneurial mindset
• Working with partners (and family!), their symbiotic skills, and how this is a great asset in business
• The thinking behind teamSOS, where the idea came from, and the problem it solves
• The importance of listening and learning from users
• ‘Successive approximation’ and continually iterating solutions to help better meet the needs of your customers

In part two they talk about:

• What advice would Lawrence give budding edtech entrepreneurs based on his own experience?
• Getting work/life balance right
• The effect of recent market changes: how consolidation makes space for speedboats!
• The innovation bubbling away in the background within smaller businesses that lead on vision and integration
• Modernising technology (case in point: walkie talkies)
• Their approach to pricing and delivering value
• How making school staff feel cared for attracts and retains the best candidates

Enjoy!

Towards the end of 2021, Nick caught up with Andy Kent, CEO and Founder of Angel Solutions who create innovative, web-based applications to help all levels of the education sector. Their tools are used nationwide, as well as internationally, from pupils, teachers and school leaders right through to local authorities and large academy chains.

Some of the questions Nick asked Andy include:

• Your business is unlike many others as you really focus on innovation and culture; what does innovation mean to you?
• What do you think is important for businesses and establishments to consider and take stock of right now, especially after Covid?
• With so many new technologies entering the market, what will your approach be to these new technologies and when to introduce them?
• What advice would you give to edtech businesses and startups?

We’ve split the interview into three parts to make it easier to digest. In part 1, Nick and Andy discuss innovation and culture at the circus (for those of you who have never visited, Angel Solutions offices are themed as a circus), and the impact of Covid on businesses.

Part 2 focuses on their ‘freemium’ model and advocacy, usage data and customer success, and showing value through usage and data. They also chat about changes in edtech and the challenge this creates.

Finally, in part 3 Nick and Andy cover ‘best of breed’ solutions, what’s new in edtech, and the future direction of Angel Solutions.

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago Nick caught up with Ian Koxvold, currently Head of Education, Strategy and Corporate Development at Supporting Education Group, but many people might know him better for his years of strategic consultancy work across the education sector.

They talked about the changes across the education sector and what the future might hold in terms of new solutions and new strategies including:

• Ian’s background delivering projects across businesses and educational establishments to make them more effective or efficient
• The insight he gets working for Supporting Education Group as the largest provider of services to schools in the UK
• His perspective on consolidation, and how this has increased from maybe 2-3 players to around 10 in recent years
• What’s a good strategy for acquiring, and has consolidation peaked in his opinion
• The importance of use case analysis in any business, and using it to identify upsell and product integration opportunities
• How different products serve different use cases
• Advice for startups in the edtech space
• The concept of ‘one product for everything’ v ‘best of breed’ solutions
• School support services, the role they play in the evolving landscape, and future consolidation
• The perils of complacency when it comes to servicing your customer, and the potential pitfalls of having a dominant supplier in any given area
• How to measure the impact of solutions on schools and why this is important to success; should we be more ambitious about how we use data?
• The future of the MIS sector given recent changes, and what we might expect to see next
• Three things companies should be doing now to future-proof their business

We’ve split the interview into three parts to make it easier to digest – enjoy!

P.S. We’re aware that some of the audio is a bit rough in places so we’re working on getting a transcript created to accompany this Q&A – we’ll add once completed 🙂

I’ve been on the end of some pretty spectacularly bad sales experiences recently and the reasons they were bad is because they involved some or other of the below.  How many do you recognise?

1. Making you feel guilty

Depending on the type of product or service you sell, the sales process involves a journey to a client meeting and it can be a long one (it’s not unusual to drive 2-3 hours or more to have a face-to-face meeting).  Never harp on to your client about your journey though; it’s not their fault you’re not based locally to them and you’re just going to make them feel guilty.  Business don’t generally buy based on guilt.

2. Telling you everything they know about their product

Unfortunately you get this in IT and technology and lot; the salesperson wants to show you exactly how much they know about their product and they won’t be happy until they’ve demoed every single thing.  Two hours later everyone in the meeting is yawning (they switched off 1hr 45mins ago) and the salesperson has no more idea of what is important to their audience than when they first walked in – they haven’t asked and they certainly haven’t listened.

3. Telling you nothing at all about their product!

Conversely, you also get the situation where the salesperson doesn’t seem to be able to tell you anything about the product.  No-one expects the salesperson to have an in-depth, technical knowledge of the product and it’s fine to say “I don’t know the answer to that but I will put you in contact with one of our experts who will be able to help”.  However, they should have a basic knowledge of what it will do for you and how it will help.  (N.B. the salesperson who just agrees and says that the product will do absolutely everything the client wants is no good either – that’s usually called mis-selling!).

4. Making assumptions

You can get great, experienced sales people who know their market, know their product, know the likely objections that will come up and know how to respond to them.  The problem here though is that all this knowledge often stops them asking the questions they once would, assuming they know the answer.  And if you don’t ask questions you’ll never really understand what your clients want so stand a much smaller chance of being able to come up with a value proposition which meets their needs.  Always ask questions.

5. Hassling

This doesn’t take much explanation but it still happens all the time, everywhere you go.  Have you ever bought anything because you were hassled into it?  Thought not.  By all means follow up the meeting, send your clients everything you said you were going to and keep you promises.  But don’t cross the line into hassling, they’ll just stop answering their phone.

Glossophobia. A cute name for a frankly crippling problem – the fear of public speaking.

There’s a theory that it’s rooted in evolution. At one point, if you found you had 20 pairs of eyes staring at you, chances are you were either going to be eaten or beaten . . . so feeling scared was definitely the correct response!

Depending on which source you believe it affects anything from 25% to 75% of us (me included!).

So how do you deal with this anxiety?

I asked my network on Linkedin what they do when they’re scared of public speaking. Their messages and advice was brilliant and included:

• Chewing gum before you stand up/go on stage to help regulate breathing
• Visualising success – run through the scenario in your head where the presentation goes well and the audience loves you
• Focus on the content of the presentation and not the audience (although I’m not sure about this one, surely the audience are the important people here?)
• Use the adrenaline and nerves to make you better (!)
• Create your own confidence by REALLY knowing your stuff
• Mindfulness
• . . . and of course the classic tactic of picturing the audience naked.

The main piece of advice though was practice, practice, practice.

How do you handle public speaking?

Sarah and I have a big interest in what it means to be a Digital Nomad. We love travelling and, as we are consultants, we want to be available for our clients as much as we can . . . and the one approach to enable both of these in our life is to be a Digital Nomad. 

We were fortunate to be asked to talk at Bett Asia 2020 (unfortunately Coronavirus put an end to that and the show was postponed to June 2020) but we’d arranged meetings in Kuala Lumpur so we thought we would make the most of the experience and tag on a 2 week holiday where we also see what it is like to work as part of the touring about. 

So, with bags packed we planned to go to Kuala Lumpur then onto Koh Lanta and then finishing off in Ao Nang before returning to the UK…. so here we go

The first test obviously is that you need an extra hand bag for the laptop and charger ect…which is fine, but adds a little more weight to the journey and a little anxiety about losing the laptop!! 

Kuala Lumpur

Meetings aside, neither of us were as effective at our usual running-the-business work in KL.  The jet lag kicked in so little work was done.

Koh Lanta

What a place! The hotel (Costa Lanta) is built with Digital Nomads in mind and served great mango lassies. I should have pitched up with tie dye fabric trousers!!  

It is so relaxing and we stayed in one of their bamboo huts, right on the beach just to get that full Thai experience. The services that they offer for Digital Nomads are top and you can do any work that you need to do, along with the ability to fully relax. To be honest,  Koh Lanta is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Both Sarah and I feel that we have relaxed and are fully refreshed. Regarding the work, to be honest it has been easy, most of the work we have done has been via phone (emails mainly).

Ao Nang

Back on the Thailand mainland and into a larger town in Krabi, working from Ao Nang has been a dream.  Tons of wifi everywhere, a great hotel with large rooms and aircon so talking with clients has been easy. The time has meant most of our hangouts, etc. have been late afternoon/early evening which has worked brilliantly and allowed us to do things during the day.

So, is being a digital nomad realistic? There are pros and cons:

Pros

• There’s the ability to be available to clients even when away which means you can maintain continuity with any project and avoid being a bottleneck.
• You get to be anywhere you like and experience any lifestyle you choose!
• Accommodation is making it easier for people to get online quickly
• The time difference ensures that you have time out and don’t fixate on work.

Cons

• You have to take a laptop with you at least (maybe more kit too – depending on the type of work you do) so you need to keep it secure
• You rarely get face-to-face time with your clients which is so important in our industry and a massive part of our consultancy work
• The time difference can make it hard to hit the right time for everyone to catch up if on hangouts… face to face is easier to communicate complex issues 
• There are lots of distractions (e.g. the beach!) so you have to be disciplined

It can be done – but it really depends on your work. You still need to set expectations with your clients about your availability and you need to set expectations with yourself and be sure not to overload yourself. 

Ultimately the more you plan and communicate, the better!

What a great 2019!!

I’m now 13 months into working for myself and running my own business and it’s great. Not only do I get to work with all sorts of inspiring people around the world, I also get to wear many hats and that variety makes me love my work.

Our Finnemore Consulting business focuses on helping business grow in the education sector. Sarah and I work with Exec teams on product strategy, biz dev, sales, product marketing, channel partnering, acquisition and client management. I’ve worked directly with foreign governments and we also get to work with educators, MATs and Support Teams directly who we’ve known for years – a definite bonus!

In addition, we’re proud to be part of the CJK Associates team. We support their work with investors and trade-buyers to help them find acquisitions, and with owners of small education companies who are looking to sell. With so much market movement going on in the Edtech sector it’s an exciting area of work.

In amongst all this I work with the excellent Tarigo in delivering Product Management and Leadership training across all sectors. It’s my area of expertise and it’s great to use this knowledge with new companies, from grads to experienced product leaders.

2020 looks like an exciting year ahead and I look forward to wearing more hats as the year goes on. If anyone’s going to #BettLondon or #BettAsia and would like to catch up, drop us a line.